Ad infinitum
by Bovineorbitor1
Summary: They deserved it. They really did. She did. He did. Hell in all its forms belonged to them. /Noah centric/


Counting in

_**She's counting all the seconds and losing track one at a time – was that a squillion billion, or a squillion billion and two?**_

1

Scratch.

Scratch.

Scratch.

A pause. When she went still she could hear rats move not far away: s_cratchscratch, _and it seemed an unfair comparison.

Rats in the dungeon and bats in the attic. She giggled briefly and ground the edge of her blunt knife into the wall.

Scratch.

It sent shivers up her arm, which was thinner and paler than she remembered, but a very suitable shade of grey.

"Road Camelot?"

Jailor's voice. He is young; he always uses her name in full, with a questioning inflection at the end. It seems like he expects her to evaporate out of here; he seems surprised every time he asks his question and finds her there to answer. He uses it like a spell, and in a way it is, an illusion of age and maturity which is true even if he can't see it. It's not like she's scared to die.

The other, more grizzled guard says _demon,_ and spits afterwards, either out of superstition or simply to cleanse his tongue. She doesn't know why, they are two simple syllables, perfectly easy to say, quite harmless. Sometimes she echoes him merrily to prove it. _Demon. Demon. _It tastes just as clean as any other word, cleaner than some. _Road Camelot_.

This boy avoided her eyes and pushed a steaming plate through the slot in the bars, where it sat all alone, ignored. The steam danced for a little while, and then the rats ate her meal for her, still warm. She watched them eat, messy like some other people she'd known.

Road couldn't reach her window to look out. There was blue out there somewhere, she knew, a great expanse of it which humans and Noah alike had named the sky, but everything was black and white in the dungeon. Maybe they were trying to communicate something to her, but Tyki could have told them she would never ever listen. She never ever did.

Black was the walls, white was the lines she had scraped down them. Not for days; she couldn't count the days trapped in here. Not for nights either, although the older jailor might say she had more of an affinity for them.

These were for family, one for every family member who might still be alive.

There were three white lines.

Scratch.

1

"Have you arranged everything?"

"Yessir."

1

_**He's taking all his cues from a dead woman. **_

1

The young man knelt alone in the church, head bowed.

Although the outside world bustled – life scrawling busy messages on the peaceful landscape, using small, cramped writing to fit everything in - even the silence here felt hushed. It was quiet as the grave, quiet as a library.

The priest cast him a look between bemusement and approval. This was a Monday and there was no service for anyone to attend, but he wouldn't hinder a soul seeking God in his home, even on off days.

This man, though roughly clad and topped with exceedingly scruffy dark hair, could have been a template for reverence, so Father Cambell kept his lips together and watched, and waited for something useful to understand.

"Morning, Father," his guest murmured finally, looking up. "A fine day, is it not?"

"I suppose," Cambell said, looking out through the open doors into the vastness of the town, crowned with deep blue. His stained glass windows played with the accommodating light, turning grey walls into living masterpieces of colour; vibrant, glorious.

"Execution day," the man added, and the sun went behind a cloud obediently. Shadows moved. Cambell refused to shiver.

"Yes indeed. I presume there is a great deal of talk in the town." People always became excitable over a hanging; restive and awkward, but never quite this joyful. Traders hummed at their work with vengeful cheer. The streets sung with anticipation. It ought to repel a civilised man, but the first feeling which came – a feeling rather than a thought – was – _she deserves it_.

For she did.

"Has she seen a priest?" his guest asked, sounding honestly curious. He did shiver, this time.

"What would be the point? Our Lord forgives sinners, but not demons."

"Ah." The young man rose stiffly.

"Will you be coming back on Sunday for the sermon?" Cambell asked, pursuing the escaping penitent with the persistence of one trying to avoid anti-climax - because this one felt special, somehow -

"No." The man slid on a pair of enormous glasses, changing a serious face into a rough parody of a vagabond, absurd and unreadable and mocking as the best parodies are, by reflection. He saw his own face waver, before the angle shifted and he was merely looking into a fine set of dark eyes.

"There wouldn't really be much point, would there?"

1

_**She is the gray in the black and white, and loving every - undefined unit of time – of it.**_

1

She stepped out into thin air.

Oh, the ground sat there beneath her feet sedately enough, and Road would never be dramatic enough to say that it was _suddenly hard to breath_, but the amount of light outside dazzled her somewhat, and she stumbled.

"Easy," said someone she didn't know, grabbing her arm. "Don't break your neck before you reach the noose."

"Thank you," she said, and pushed his hands away. She wasn't yet really angry, but pressed against it in places.

They gave her a bag to hide her face. Nobody wanted to think that they wanted to see a little girl -purple face and popping eyes – playing the pendulum. She counted her steps until she reached their favourite display unit.

Maybe he'd come and see her.

They might have given her candy first, as a final concession. Her mouth tasted a little funny, but it wasn't like she was scared to die.

Of course he'd come. Didn't he always?

The contraption creaked. Such odd things humans used to kill each other, when in reality it was simple as –

1

_**He'll be lonely without her, even though she's still right here, right **_**here, **she is -

1

Cursing the bureaucracy that had rearranged the time of the hanging, and cursing himself, cursing the exorcists standing around in silent guard. 'Himself' was at the top of the list, but maybe that was human nature.

He fought through the crowd using mainly elbows and just a little magic, and staggered just in time to loose sight of her –

1

Falling.

1

Oh…

1

He let the stagger finish, dropped to his knees for quite reasonable reasons, and the eyes of the crowd surging around him didn't even blink because after all, he'd been pushed down.

"You alright, Mister?" said someone he didn't know, grabbing his arm.

"Thank you," he said, and didn't move, didn't even blink, because after all…

1

Time.

1

A solitary moon ghosted over the town, hunting for kindred spirits.

The gray light haunting his face as he lay back identified him to a searching sky, though it found no tear tracks. He supposed that meant that either she wasn't a Noah when they'd killed her, or his family name had simply become accustomed.

The view from here was beautiful, every blade of grass as distinct as it was dew splattered, the long and winding road plunging off the horizon with a recklessness that he intended to match very soon.

The view from here was beautiful, but he wouldn't be looking long.

An approaching vehicle rumbled by. It drew his eyes down to the road, focusing, focusing, and the view drifted from his mind, from existence.

Here she came.

His back was wet from lying where he'd been, his feet slid a little on the wet still on the ground, but he didn't want to walk on air so soon after, he'd rather downslide, so he did.

1

_**She is - **_

1

She lay quiet in the back. There were a small pile of other bodies – criminals and those too dirt poor to afford a funeral – and she would have hated this kind of company, she really would. He listened to the sad refrain of a guard gurgling behind him as he lifted her gently, away from those destined for the scrapheap graveyard kept prepared for just these occasions.

Her head flopped limply against his chest - she'd never been so passive before - and he winced, hard, away from the new her. His tongue tangoed with and tangled in apologies which never reached his lips and wouldn't have reached her ears even if he'd said them.

"Ro…"

And the funny thing was, they deserved it. They really did. She did. He did. Hell in all its forms belonged to them.

"…ad."

He was sorry, after all.

The breeze picked up, dancing in her hair and his, and in the flowers scattered along the roadside. Leaves brushed against his feet.

Words spilled out, directionless.

"I abandoned them for you, you know. Again. It made more sense when you weren't human. It made more sense when you weren't dead, for that matter. But now you are and still…" a shift in position, "here I am…"

He took a breath. "Don't ask me why. Just remember that you like weird."

The moon gorged itself on thick cloud and he sank into a sitting position with her limpness slung over his knees, and he laughed a little.

"Do you remember that it was you who told me we were special? Probably you do…"

The laughter trailed off, murdered by contemplation.

"I only half believed you, and at the same time I was absolutely certain that you were right. It was literally carved into our faces. But Road…you didn't need a reason to be special."

This last tasted wrong in his mouth, he rolled it a little in his mind and decided he shouldn't have said it. She was no insecure child, seeking out her reasons with accompanying reassurances; if she had one extra motive to be extraordinary that was none of his business and nothing if not appropriate. It was just that he knew, now that they'd lost, that the humans were the lucky ones in a way.

It was an irony, if a bitter one, and he closed his mouth again to think about it.

1

Time.

1

_She is-_

1

_When I bury you – _he doesn't say this out loud, because he's afraid that it'll be a promise if he does, and he's still waiting for her to move – _It will be in a way I think you would have wanted. I'll probably get it wrong, but it's better than nothing, right? _

Maybe she twitched here, or maybe it's the way he moved his hands, expressive, changing the dark patches on her face to dark patches somewhere else. _Maybe somewhere with not too many flowers, and not too few. Not overly close to real people, either, they always did make you edgy. _

_Don't moan, I'm doing the best I can. _

_On the gravestone I will write…actually, I'm not sure. What do you think? Something for everybody? _

Maybe she sighed here, but perhaps it was the way he squinted at her as though the sun were in his eyes instead of somewhere behind him, inspecting the underbelly of the world, scuba diving under the horizon, and maybe in the way silence filled his ears like water.

_Perhaps I'll leave it blank. And then I'll – then I'll…Go back to _them_? Go off on my own? Stage a one Noah attempt at revenge? There's no-one else left, is there? They would have come to your execution, Road, they'd give you that much…they might even have saved you._

_I don't want to sound ungrateful, Road, but you might have found a way of saving _me_ which didn't leave me quite so out of the loop._

He fell into silence, watching the chalk white of her face turn dark at the edges, reflecting his arms.

He imagined that he dreamed that she opened one eye, and groaned, and said his name - "Tyki?" – and he looked away. He was getting a little tired of illusions now, a little tired of having a white side with which to hope.

"Tyki, my neck hurts."

His back went stiff, and his hands went still, his eyes wide, and dreams dissipated.

"_Road!"_

_1_

_**-Alive. **_

1111

AN: If you're confused - good. All details will be revealed. Probably. If you're not confused - good. All details may well be forgotten about.

Set in a future in which the exorcists won and at least some of the Noah died. Wild Angst ahoy. If you have crit, please be gentle, I already feel like clubbing this thing to death. My first DGM fic, Sapiens, was something of a study for this, only inverted, so some of the themes may initially be similar.


End file.
